Illogical Paradox

The night after August 12 I stayed up all night packing and saying goodbye to everyone at LHIYS, and in the morning the program ended and I went to Haifa to stay with my grandma. It was so strange to suddenly have to say goodbye to the 30 or so people in the the program. For more than six weeks, we’d lived, laughed, cried, worked, played, and learned together. And all of a sudden, they were leaving.

So I arrived in Haifa and was exhausted. Yet at the same time, I was staring wide-eyed through the windows at the city where I was born–not that long ago by human terms–and dream constantly of coming back to. It’s the same. I saw the sea and the mountain and the narrow, winding streets. We took a taxi up to my grandma’s house and let me tell you, it was like a roller coaster. The little car careened through the streets, dodging other cars and buses like bullets. I held on for dear life. Those Israeli drivers…

My grandma lives in an old neighborhood, on a narrow one-way street. Its residents are mostly aged, as well, and the way of life is still exactly like it was years and decades ago in many ways. This is a place where housewives still trudge slowly down the street with bags of produce from the market, and hang their laundry up to dry on clotheslines behind their buildings or under their windows. Few people have cars, which is good because there isn’t anywhere to park them. Old men and women sit on plastic chairs outside and talk all day, late into the evening. Everybody’s windows are open all day and night, with no screens to keep out the mosquitos. Everybody knows everybody else.

Long, crumbling stairs are better modes of pedestrian transportation here than streets and sidewalks. Dozens of these, hundreds of steps, lead from one street up or down to the next. Buildings are nestled right into the mountain, so that apartments often have their doors right along these vertical stairs. There are no elevators. Behind the buildings are small yards where clothes are dried, vegetables are grown, and feral cats are fed. It’s easy to see how old the neighborhood is: things sometimes seem to be falling apart, sewage sometimes leaks out onto the street.

It’s important to me to come back here every once in a while and gain perspective. Though I may live in a really nice neighborhood, in a house with four huge bedrooms and parquet floors, and even though I speak and write in English and partake of American food and music and movies and literature like everybody else…this is actually where I came from. These streets and buildings. This very humble, very beautiful place.

Of course, there are plenty of wealthy or even just middle-class parts of Haifa, and Israel as a whole. There are towering glass skyscrapers and glitzy malls here, too. But on the whole, Israel isn’t a country of plastic and chrome, like America. It’s a place of old stones worn smooth by millions of footsteps.

Yesterday I went to the beach with my grandma and, after walking down the street for a while, was surprised to see that we were getting on a bus. It was my first time riding an Israeli bus. Every time I’ve come here before, my parents specifically forbade me from ever taking one. That was while the Intifada was more or less still going on, and Haifa hadn’t been entirely without any “incidents”, as many prefer to call them. But I was stepping onto one now, and despite the relative calm (if there is such a thing in Israel) of the past few years, my pulse quickened anyway. I saw that there were two doors on the bus, so in case anything suspicious started happening…

Last night I went for a quick walk down the street. On the way down the stairs from the apartment, I ran into someone who knows me. She asked if I’m enjoying my summer in Israel, and how my little brother is. She said to pass along her regards to my parents. I was only momentarily surprised by this, because I know her too. She is Bella, an elderly lady who’s lived here for God knows how long and seems to have a liking for me. When I was very little, I would run away like mad at every sight of her. Even now I suddenly had the urge to dart away, just because of the habit. But I didn’t, of course. Back then, though, I was absolutely terrified of the sight of her coming up and down the stairs with her huge tub full of laundry, and knew that I was about to be spoken to in a language that I didn’t understand. She spoke Hebrew and English, and I knew neither, and foreign languages–pardon my French–scared the shit out of me.

So I went down the street and dragged my still-tired body up one of the numerous sets of stairs. I immediately found the spot I was looking for: a lonely grave up above the buildings but below the next street up. The grave belongs to a 16-year-old boy who died defending Haifa, but I don’t know when. Several decades ago, at least. My mom and I found the grave several years ago, and it was untended and unremembered. But this time, I was amazed to find a huge pile of stones on the grave. In Israel, when you visit a grave you put a stone on it to pay tribute. So I added one to the pile.

Back at the apartment, I stood on the balcony and looked over the view of Haifa Bay. It’s a spectacular view that pretty much every resident of Haifa can see from home, due to the city being on a mountain. The visibility is never all that good, thanks to Haifa’s muggy climate, but it’s breathtaking all the same.

My grandma told me about what it was like during the bombing of Haifa two years ago: where the rockets came from, where they landed, how loud their piercing shriek was. In a way I wish I’d been there to witness it for myself, but on the other hand, I don’t. I don’t think I could’ve handled it.

Everytime I stand on that balcony now, I am immediately reminded of the fact that what I see before me might not be there anymore in a year or two. We pray to God that it will be, but who’s to say? If there is a God at all, I think He only controls the inner workings of the universe, not the minds of crazed, fanatical men. Anyone who blames the horrors of the human condition on God is being naive.

And yet I found that one doesn’t really think about this while walking down the street. At least, the people who live here don’t seem to. They’re thinking about their grandchildren in America and how high the price of tomatoes was at the market that day, and how nice it’ll be next week when the temperature’s supposed to go down a bit.

They’re living their lives, we’re living our lives…for what else can you do?

I wasn’t going to post on here about the details of what I’m doing in Israel, but this was an experience I did want to put out there.

Last Friday we visited the security barrier that separates the West Bank from the rest of Israel. It was a profound moment, as this picture I took attests:

“We will never forget”, an extremely powerful Jewish slogan, right next to “Free Palestine”, an equally strong Palestinian one.

So I was standing there looking at the line that divides my homeland in half, and thinking about that. Sometimes I don’t understand how anybody in Israel can be there and yet want to fight. Like the Hezbollah forces camped out on the mountain we saw a few weeks ago. How they can look down over such beauty and fire rockets at it will forever remain a mystery to me. Or the Palestinians with the bulldozers on King David Street in Jerusalem. To be surrounded by buildings and streets thousands of years old, palm trees and flowers everywhere, and yet go into an angry rampage and maul civilians on the street until you’re shot dead.

Or Haifa, bombed during the Lebanon War two years ago. Anybody who’s been there–for instance, me–can easily attest that it’s a breath-taking place. To me, it’s holy. There’s the Bahai Shrine on the mountainside, with its huge gardens stretching out above and below it. There’s the Technion campus and Mount Carmel National Park on the mountaintop. The streets Adar and Herzl, full past capacity of people, shops, and things being sold. The Neve Sha’anan district right above my grandma’s neighborhood, with its high-rise apartments in blue and white buildings, and wide boulevards with flower beds going down the middle.

Somebody looked at those places and bombed them. And will again, believe me. That’s realism, and for those of us brought up to believe there’s any decency in the world, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

I’ve been listening to a song by One Republic called “Come Home”. It has a verse that basically summarizes that…

I get lost in the beauty of everything I see
The world ain’t half as bad
As they paint it to be.
If all the sons, all the daughters
Stopped to take it in,
Well, hopefully the hate subsides
And love can begin.
It might start now,
Or maybe I’m just dreaming out loud
Until then.

So…pray for peace.